


long live the queen

by belatrix



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:12:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9311048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belatrix/pseuds/belatrix
Summary: An appreciation for being underestimated.[Sansa, Margaery, and Cersei: They know how much more than that they truly are.]





	

This is one of Sansa’s most vivid memories from home:

A large bedroom with pink walls and her mother combing through her hair. They were talking about a boy Sansa was in love with, and looking into the mirror she could see their similarities, how in time she would grow into Catelyn’s features. The lines around her mother’s lips were lines of laughter.

“There is so much you will have to know about men,” Catelyn said, her smile a little strange, a little wistful. “At the same time, there is nothing to know at all. They’re simple creatures, Sansa. It’s their eyes, always their eyes.”

Sansa had always preferred to look at how boys smiled, listen to how they talked, sweet like honey and brave like knights.

In King’s Landing, she understands.

 

 

 

In the back rooms of dark clubs, in the halls of shining mansions, they whisper that Cersei sometimes hikes up her dress and rides on motorcycles, the way Jaime showed her when they were kids. Someone claimed he saw her around midnight, with leather boots laced above the knee and her hair tumbling loose behind her, a curtain of tangled gold in the night sky.

On the front page of Sunday’s news, she smiles precisely through the glossy paper with a mouth red like a knife wound, not a single curl out of place.

 _Our attorneys will sort out all misunderstandings_ , she tells the reporter, perfectly bored. _Lannister companies have never been involved in criminal activities, and I can assure you that they never will_.

The article talks about the upcoming wedding, next.

Her father always tells her to be careful with the press and the police, and she tilts her head so that the light might reach her face just _so_. “They have no power here,” she says, and Jaime laughs.

 

 

 

The Tyrells arrive with gold and smiles, and decorate their fabrics with roses the colors of spring, almost incongruous in this city of stone and rain and gray smoke. The maids tell Sansa to not be fooled; _Lannisters with flowers_ , they say, but Sansa cannot help but look at how Loras Tyrell’s hair falls in ringlets, how Margaery wears white lace and goes to church every morning, pressing her lips against a rosary like the Madonna.

“We will become good friends, you and I,” Margaery says, and her smile is nothing like Cersei’s and the exact same all at once.

She does not smoke, and her lipstick is pale enough to not remind men of blood, but they eye her all the same. At the bar, she listens to soft jazz like she would a hymn, and all the singers love her. Her drink of choice is a cocktail Sansa doesn’t know the name of, fragrant and colorful and sweet.

The thing not everyone knows: Margaery has a knife with an ivory handle strapped to her thigh, and Tyrell men hold their shoulders straight and cross their legs when she walks in the room. Her grandmother is not always with her, but give her time, she’ll learn not to need Olenna.

Give her time.

 

 

 

Sometimes, things are simple.

There is the front that the world sees: all the men, dark and powerful and severe, running the city with an iron grip and the reddest blood.

These men? These dangerous men with their slicked back hair and their tailored suits, cigars held between their fingers and guns hidden in their coats? These men are gods, here, in the underbelly of the underworld.

These men, who smile like their teeth are made of blades and bullets. Gods relishing in being godless.

There is the truth the world forgets: their mothers, their wives, their sisters and their daughters, they do not pray to these men.

All you have to do is look behind the curtain. It’s simple, really.

 

 

 

Cersei has bailed her brother(s) out of jail more times than she can care to count, but this is not about money. It’s not even about family.

Tyrion tells her, “You’re not as smart as you think you are”, and it makes her want to laugh, bitter and cruel. This is not about being smart, she thinks. This is about playing the game.

And _oh_ , she has played.

She has played, and waited, and waited, and waited.

So she caps her lipstick, turns her face to make sure it’s put on perfect. A shade of bruised cherry. She looks at Tyrion through the mirror and arches an eyebrow, belligerent.

“Be careful, little brother.”

The thing is, everyone cowers before the rage of men. Gunshots in the night, blood running through the streets, buildings burnt to a cinder, their fathers and their sons have enough rage in them to pummel the world into submission.

_What about my rage?_

On the day of the wedding her firstborn dies in her arms, and Cersei swears to drown the city in red.

 

 

 

Margaery wears black, a veil slanting daintily over her eyes. She will wear black for a month. Black silk smooth against her skin, the pencil skirt stopping right above her knees. A modest bust. Dainty little flowers, made of velvet, adorning the neckline. Her grandmother approves.

The bar is nearly empty. This time, she asked the singers for something soft and mournful.

Perhaps it is not wise, to speak freely with her cousins and her friends in such a public place, but the men keep their gazes to their pints and their cards and their pool tables. It is a day of grief and madness and danger; Joffrey’s dead, and if one king can be shot down, the rest can, too.

Margaery almost smiles. The men are afraid.

But there are rumors, like always, and Margaery cannot cast her dice if she doesn’t fix the odds to her favor first. She knows who murdered her husband, but there are more variables to the game than that. She’ll have to know the truth.

She tugs on her dress just a little, and sidles up to one of the prostitutes who used to spy around Sansa Stark’s room. Her kind know everything, even (or maybe, especially) when they pretend they don’t. Margaery likes them.

“Shouldn’t you be crying your eyes out for the Baratheon boy?” the girl asks, lips curling.

Margaery sighs. “I have no more tears to shed, I’m afraid. My greatest worry is my dear friend, Sansa. Before the funeral… she disappeared. I have not seen her in days.”

“I’m sure she’s not in danger.”

“Oh, I’m sure, too.” It’s Margaery’s turn to let her lips curve into something shrewd, something sharp. “She’s learned from both myself and Cersei, after all.”

The girl lets out a soft chuckle. “Poor Littlefinger.”

 _Well_. So that’s where Sansa is.

 

 

 

She did not kill Joffrey, but she feels like she did.

Sansa does not dream of blood, she doesn’t feel it crusting beneath her fingernails. Sansa feels oddly light, translucent, her hands are clean and pale, her nails painted the softest shade of pink.

Secreted in one of Petyr’s clubs at the edge of town, she has nothing to do but sit and think and dream, and marvel at how unimportant everyone considers her. Even Petyr, her friend, her rescuer, her protector ―he does not value her as Sansa, not yet. She’s her mother’s daughter. She’s a Stark.

And that’s good, because―

 _Tears are not a woman’s only weapon_ , Cersei told her once, a lifetime ago. _The best one is between your legs_.

Sansa found it crude and awful, then, and finds it crude and awful now, and knows with conviction that it is untrue. But if there’s one thing she borrowed from Margaery, then it is an appreciation for being underestimated.

And Petyr… Petyr might be too smart to fall for this, but a smart man is still a man.

At dinner she wears white and lets her hair fall heavy around her shoulders, fire-red under the artificial light. She talks, nostalgic, about Catelyn. Petyr looks at her and straight through, eyes dark with something like hunger, something like recognition, and Sansa thinks ― _you poor, sad thing_.

 

 

 

Tywin Lannister has always fathomed himself the head of the underworld, but with his grandson gone, he assumes the position officially, as well. Cersei bites down on her tongue to keep from screaming. _Of fucking course, father_. But she’s good at this, being behind the throne. She’s good.

Margaery smiles at Tommen with dimples and brings him kittens, and keeps pretending she does not know how to shoot a man at twenty paces. She still wears lace and velvet and silk. She still goes to church.

Sansa watches Petyr watching her, and tilts her head so that her neck seems longer, lets her hair brush over her face to hide a smile. She kisses him like she doesn’t know how to do it, like she's asking him to teach her, and listens to his breath hitch. There is a bounty on her head, and she saw posters her face plastered on streetlights and walls of bars and taverns. She thinks of her family.

Mothers, wives, daughters. Queens of the underworld. Mobsters’ molls.

Quietly, they know how much more than that they truly are. And sometimes, sometimes their men seem to understand this, too.

 


End file.
